Characterization of energy use and performance of global cheese processing

Tengfang Xu, Joris Flapper and Klaas Jan Kramer

Energy, 2009, vol. 34, issue 11, 1993-2000

Abstract: The global cheese-making industry processes approximately one quarter of total raw milk production to create a variety of consumer cheeses, and cheese processing can be very energy-intensive. Characterizing energy usage in existing cheese markets and plants can provide baseline information to allow comparisons of energy performance of individual plants and systems. In this paper, we analyzed energy data compiled through extensive literature reviews on cheese-making across various countries and regions. The study has found that the magnitudes of average final energy intensity exhibited significant variations, ranging from 4.9 to 8.9MJ per kg cheese across a few countries. In addition, the final energy intensity of individual plants exhibited even more significant variations, ranging from 1.8 to 68.2MJ per kg of cheese from the countries in this study. These significant differences have indicated large potential energy savings' opportunities in the sector. The paper also indicates that there are positive association between implementation of energy measures and the decreasing trends of specific energy consumption over time, and suggests that developing and promulgating an energy-benchmarking framework including a process step approach and efficiency measures should be recommended for evaluating energy performance and improving energy efficiency in cheese-making industry.

Keywords: Specific energy consumption (SEC); Cheese; Dairy process; Greenhouse gas; Benchmarking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544209003533
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:34:y:2009:i:11:p:1993-2000

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2009.08.014

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().